Of War and Romance
by anneelizabeth
Summary: Preparing themselves for heartache and heartbreak on the eve of his departure, Jerry and Nan have one last argument, this time about why they're not engaged.  This is like a sequel of sorts to "Of Ingleside and the Island" though it can be read alone.
1. Chapter 1

He found her in Rainbow Valley, sitting by the bubbling brook and staring at the starry sky. She made a pretty picture, he thought. With her pink dress and slender delicacy, she looked like a wild rose in a field of green

"I'm leaving with Jem tomorrow," he stated simply, dropping to the grass beside her.

She turned to him, her usually dreamy brown eyes dark and troubled. "I know," she replied, her voice low and sad. She hesitated then added, with a hint of bitterness, "I'm not fool enough to ask you to stay, Jerry.

He sighed, running his hand through his hair. "Nan..." he said

She held up a slender white hand to stop him. "I know war, and I know what it entails. Goodness knows how many books I've read about it. She paused and gave a bitter laugh. "And I always thought that it would be _so_ romantic, knowing a handsome soldier who went to war.

He grinned a little. "Are you calling me handsome?

She ignored him and continued to look at the night. "But war isn't romance. It isn't adventure." She faced him again, her pretty face pale and upset. "It's bloodshed, it's killing, it's...it's murder, it's death. It's death, Jerry! I don't see how you and Jem can be so_ excited_ about it.

He turned serious. Looking at the brook beside him, he said earnestly, "I look at it as fighting for what I believe in. And I believe that what I will fight for must be worth the cost-and I, we all, should be willing to pay the price, even with our lives."

Nan smiled wryly. "And they call _me_ the romantic one," she said.

He looked at her, puzzled. She sighed and explained, "Jerry, that's all very well and good, from an idealistic, romanticized perspective. But if you could just see what war is without all the romance, all the poetry…"

"Are you, Nan, dreamer and sentimentalist, seriously telling me this?" he asked lightly, wanting her to go back to being who she really was, his dreamy, ethereal fairy.

She stiffened. "Jerry, it's death, that's what it is! It's suffering, maybe not as much for you, but for the people you've left behind!"

A little surprised at her outburst, he looked at her and was shocked to see tears sparkling in her eyes. He reached out his arm and pulled her closer to him. Not knowing what else to say, he held her close comfortingly and with a pang, realized what he must do.

Eventually, Nan's shaking ceased. Sensing this, Jerry gently pulled away and lifted her face to face his. "Nan, I can't promise you anything," he said quietly, his usually flashing black eyes soft and tender. "I can't tell you that I won't die, and that I'll live and come back to you when this all ends."

He watched realization dawn on her face as she slowly turned her head away from him and he continued, even as the words he said broke his own heart. "I don't want to leave you here, just waiting for me to come back, knowing that there's a possibility I may not—"

At his words, Nan gave a little cry. "How can you even say that, Jerry?" she asked brokenly.

"I can't stand the thought of you wasting away because of me," he said. "You're an idealist, Nan, _my_ own starry-eyed romantic—and I don't want whatever will happen to me change that."

"Jerry, it already has," she whispered, he barely catching her words.

He was having difficulty forming his thoughts into coherent words because he knew, he knew that he loved her, always had loved her, from the moment she told him about Six-Toed Jimmy and the GLOOMY HOUSE and her walk across the graveyard, but he never knew just how deeply until now, when he saw the sacrifice he would make to ensure that at least her life would remain untainted.

"Nan, do you remember a few years ago, when we talked about how romance is what gives color to our lives? That it makes us dream of going courageously forth on adventure, on seeking bends in the road, because of what may await us in the end?"

She nodded a little, biting her lip to keep tears from falling.

"And you told me that romance was there to make us feel that life is full of hope for what may happen and that whatever will happen will be good? And that poetry and beauty are more than just illusions, that they are what help us face the world and believe that not everything is dreary and dark?"

She gave a bitter smile and said, "And you said that I should be there to remind you to always make a little room for it."

He looked at her, his voice full of meaning. "That's your role, my Nan. I have a feeling that this war will make us all need that bit of beauty and poetry and romance. You—you're my hope that life will get better and that whatever may happen at the end of this war will be good. That what I will be doing, that what I'll be fighting for, is worthwhile and honorable and right, and that it will contribute to the goodness, to the beauty, of life."

Nan was crying again. "I can't—I can't romanticize this, Jerry!" she said, her voice full of pain. "All I see is you and Jem, lying dead on the battlefield!"

Jerry set his mouth firmly. "I can't promise you that it won't happen to me," he said again. "So I want you to promise, that no matter what happens to me, you will continue living your life the way you have. I want you to continue to let people know that the world is not a dark, dreary place. Then I will know that I have not fought in vain."

"It will be, without you!" Nan, proud, queenly Nan, was now sobbing into her arms.

"Listen to me," he said even more firmly. "Don't let what happens to me change the way you see the world. I need you to always be what you are now, I—I don't want you to become bitter and cynical because of me, I will never forgive myself."

He paused and continued, drawing a deep breath and preparing for the heartbreak he was about to confer on himself. "I will not make any promise that I may not be able to keep. I wont…" Here, his voice broke and he had to pause to collect himself.

"Do you love me, Jerry?" Nan asked abruptly, her eyes finding his troubled, unfathomable ones.

He couldn't look at her now, at her beautiful face, at her eyes, proud but appealing.

"You don't," she stated flatly.

He looked up, shocked. "How can you even think that, Nan?" he asked passionately. "Of course I love you!"

"Then why…"

"Nan, it's because I love you so much, that I am asking you not to wait for me!" He exclaimed fervently. "I want you to be able to live your life, in beauty, in poetry, and in romance, whether or not I make out of this war alive!"

"But I don't want to, if it isn't with you!" cried Nan, all pride and demureness forgotten.

"And that's exactly why I am doing this," he said quietly. "Even if it breaks my heart, I—I don't want you to waste your life mourning me and what might have been."

"Romance and poetry must have hope to survive," said Nan faintly. "And without hope, without you giving me the hope that you will come out of this war alive and that we can live our lives together, then I see the world as dark and as dreary as it probably really is."

He couldn't help it. He kissed her, wanting to tell her what he felt for her without binding her with words, until he got hold of himself, stopped and buried his face in his hands. He didn't move until he felt a touch on his shoulder.

"I understand, Jerry, I really do," she said softly. "But even if you choose not to hold me to a promise, I will promise you that I will always be waiting for you and hoping that you will want to come home to me." Her voice broke a little as she continued, "And no matter what happens, I promise to always remind you to have a little romance in your life."

He looked at her and she must have understood the feeling in his eyes, the meaning in his countenance, because she kissed him, stood up, held out her hand, and said, "I'll be at the station early tomorrow."


	2. Epilogue

"Four years", Nan thought. "Four long, hard, heartbreaking years."

Winter was coming to Canada, bringing with it all the boys in khaki. Train stations were filled to the brim of homecoming soldiers, some with joyful families to meet them, some with secret smiles, anticipating the surprise they knew would welcome them. They had all changed – they were older, battle scarred, perhaps permanently, some with bitterness and resentment, full of memories of death and suffering – but they were _alive. _

Nan Blythe was four years older than when we last saw her but her nut-brown hair was as long and glossy, her complexion as pink and white, and her delicacy as slender and graceful as it was of yore. It was her dreamy big brown eyes that had changed – it held suffering and grief, bitterness and despair, in their depths. She, like everyone in her generation, had grown up, way before their time.

She sat on the station bench as she waited for the Glen train, oblivious to the admiring glances sent her way, as she watched yet another sunburnt soldier tenderly wrap his arms around his overjoyed sweetheart. Tears threatened to spill over from her eyes as the loving reunion unfolded before common sense and pride – where would Nan be without it – took over.

"Silly goose," she told herself reproachfully. "You have no right to expect anything more than friendship from him."

And yet, that did not stop her from rejecting every suitor that came her way. From keeping all of his letters as if they were the most precious diamonds in the world – re-reading each line when she felt lonely, alone, or afraid. From faithfully loving him with all of her heart, even when she was not sure if he still felt the same.

But he did, once. She vividly remembers their last night together in Rainbow Valley, where she, all pride forgotten, opened her heart to him as he did to her. He loved her then but refused to hold her to a promise. Although Nan could not doubt the sincerity of his feelings then, four years of war, four years in a different place, with different girls, could have changed his regard for her.

And while his letters were almost free from any sentiment, there were some that peeked out and showed her just how he felt about her – when he wrote to her about his experience of being shot in the back and seeing a vision of her, near the spring in Rainbow Valley. When he wrote on one particularly sentimental postcript, "I'll always be yours." Short sentences, straight to the point, just like the writer himself.

But she had read too many stories of Canadian soldiers bringing French and Belgian brides with them – women who had saved them from starvation, hidden them from German troops, brave women who had experienced the war with them. And, though she knew she was being selfish, she had been both afraid and a little jealous.

Because it had been five months since his last letter, where he simply wrote that he was recovering from his wounds in a London hospital. And she had not heard from him since. He could be smitten with an English nurse, for all she knew. And what would she do then? The thought was too painful to comprehend so she turned her thoughts back to the scenes in front of her, losing herself, as she was still sometimes wont to.

She noticed a tall, dark soldier at the corner of her eye, who held himself a little stiffly, standing apart from the crowd. She imagined that he was planning to surprise his family, perhaps, his sweetheart or his wife, judging from the way he kept glancing at the train schedules and at the station clock. She smiled to herself, picturing the scene of his homecoming and then, as she remembered her own brother who would never have his homecoming, quickly looked away, valiantly hiding her sudden tears and the ache in her heart.

The soldier himself felt her eyes on him, and glancing at her, drew a sudden, sharp breath. It couldn't be – was it? He looked more closely at her – a beautiful dark-haired girl whose dreamy expression was so familiar and so dear to him. He felt as if he couldn't breathe, his heart was expanding and beating a hundred miles a minute and he felt lightheaded. Her face, the face that kept him sane in the trenches, was there, right in front of him, just a few steps away. And yet he could not move. He felt glued to the ground as a thousand feelings whirled inside him.

The station bell rang, announcing the arrival of the next train and Nan looked up and immediately caught the soldier's eye. She felt a jolt in her heart as the soldier stared at her and as their eyes met, it seemed that the spell holding him immobile had broken. Unable to speak, he moved wordlessly towards her as she stood up and froze.

He caught her cold hands, his eyes, dark and blazing, looking at her intensely as if he could not believe she was standing there. Her eyes roved his face. He was older but his eyes were still as black as she remembered, flashing and twinkling at the same time. And oh! How handsome he was. Nan, who had steadfastly stopped indulging in all her fancies as the war dragged on and on, was now experiencing the old, sweetly familiar feeling of soul-thrilling giddiness as he stood before her.

Before she could grasp any word, he broke the silence as he finally spoke the words he had been wanting to say, had been practicing over and over again, in the trenches, in the hospitals, on the boat and on the trains, the two words that had been preying on his mind all these years, those he struggled to contain through all his letters:

"Marry me."

* * *

I originally meant this story to be a one-shot, but I recently thought this up. Hope you all like it!


End file.
